4b-SEVEN ANCIENT Name________________________ WONDERS

Study Guide Teacher at home,

This HOMEWORK PACKET is due on ________________________ and is to be

completed by the student and verified by the teacher at home. Please be sure that

your student has completed EVERY assignment, with no blanks. Below is a suggested

schedule. By initialing the boxes you are stating that you accept your child’s quality

of work for this week.

ALL WEEK ______Read the seven coloring pages that tell about the 7 wonders. Optional: feel free to color them with markers/colored pencils!

Mon. ______Read pages 2-9 of the SEVEN ANCIENT WONDERS OF THE WORLD handout (there is no magazine for this topic)

Tues. ______Complete the “More Reading on the Seven Wonders” sheet; do both the word search and fill in the blank exercise.

Wed. ______Review pages 1-9, focusing on the bolded words. Work on memorizing the seven ancient wonders. Prepare for the quiz that includes knowing all of the ancient wonders by name (no particular order)!

Thur. ______Be able to memorize the seven ancient wonders. Quiz in class!

Your Book Report for Unit One will be due __________________. You may read any grade-appropriate informational, fiction, or nonfiction book on the topic of Ancient India or Ancient Egypt. You may find suggestions on the last pages of the KIDS DISCOVER magazines.

Please contact me at ____________________________________________ if you have ANY questions at all.

Blessings,

Kristina Parnell

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KIDS

DISCOVER

Suggested Schedule:

SEVEN WONDERS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD as depicted by 16th-century Dutch artist Marten Heemskerk. (from left to right, top to bottom): 1) Great Pyramid of Giza, 2) Hanging Gardens of Babylon, 3) Temple of Artemis, 4) Statue of Zeus at Olympia, 5) Mausoleum of Maussollos (or Halicarnassus), 6) Colossus of Rhodes and the 7) Pharos of Alexandria

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Wonders_of_the_World

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As you can see, the seven wonders of the ancient world are all located in one central area that includes parts of three continents: southwest Asia (Asia minor), southeast Europe, and northeast Africa.

So far, we have studied Ancient India, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece and Ancient Persia. Most of the seven ancient wonders are located in what was once Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Persia and Ancient Mesopotamia.

1. The Great Pyramid of Giza

The Pyramids of Giza are located outside of Cairo, Egypt. They were old before the other six wonders were even built.

The tradition of monumental tombs for Pharaohs began with the step pyramid of Zoser, which gave the impression of a stone hill 197 feet high. Later pharaohs wanted bigger, more impressive tombs.

The largest is the Great Pyramid of Kufu , built for King Kufu about 2590-2570 B.C. by his engineer, Imhotep. The Great Pyramid was about 482 feet high, on a base measuring 755 square feet. The interior of the pyramid

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was almost solid, with gangways and burial chambers. Some of the chambers were empty, serving as decoys for thieves.

The Great Pyramid's base area would allow enough parking space for ten jumbo jets, and it is as high as three space shuttles stacked on top of each other, nose to tail. From its huge base it comes to a point 4 inches wide which was gold plated and glittered in the sun. The pyramid is made from more than two-million stone blocks, each of them twice the weight of an average car. If the pyramid was hollow, it would easily hold the Houses of Parliament and St. Paul's Cathedral from London, or the Pentagon and the Capital from Washington D.C. If the stones were broken up and made into a wall 1 feet wide and 3 feet high, it would stretch all the way around France.

It is the main building in a town of the dead near Giza. The Greeks sometimes called it the Cheops Pyramid. Around it are remains of more than eighty other pyramids, as well as temples, tombs, altars and ceremonial roadways. Behind the pyramids is the Sphinx, a stone lion with a bearded, human face.

The whole place, pyramids, roads, temples, Sphinx, is almost always being scoured by desert sand, which has pitted and scarred the surface of the stone.

Even today with dynamite to blast the rocks and cranes and bulldozers to move them, it would take years of effort to build such an enormous pile. The Egyptians made do with muscle and brains. To get the stone, they chiseled holes in sandstone cliffs, then hammered wooden wedges into them and soaked the wedges with water. When the wood swelled, it split the stone. When each two to three-ton block was ready, they raised it with levers on a huge wooden sledge, and harnessed a team of men to it. About a hundred men pulled, while ten more lubricated the sledge-runners. They hauled the stone to the Nile River, floated it on rafts down-river to the building site at Giza, pulled it up sloping earth ramps and fitted it in place.

When the basic pyramid was finished, the builders faced it with smooth stones to make it smooth and flat (the stones were later removed to use on other buildings.) Inside, passageways led to a burial chamber about the size of a modern house. Its walls were polished pink granite and inside was a sarcophagus (coffin-box) carved so perfectly from a single stone that if you hit it it would make the sound of a bell.

The Ancient Egyptians believed that a human being had two different parts, a body and a spirit. They thought that the spirit world was just like the body world and the spirit needed clothes, food, furniture, money, and even games and toys. The Egyptians believed that the spirit's home was its body, and they tried to preserve the body as long as possible after the death. Funeral

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priests began by removing all soft parts, brain, lungs, heart, liver, intestines, and pickling them in gigantic clay jars. They packed the rest of the body with preserving salts and wrapped it tightly in bandages. They laid the mummy to rest in a tomb with all of it's food, clothing, and anything else it needed in the spirit world.

At the king's funeral, his body was brought down river on a royal barge, carried to the pyramid, down the passageway and into the chamber, where he was laid to rest with all of the belongings he would need in the afterlife. The doorway was plugged with a stone, and a curse was placed on anyone who broke it down. The priests and mourners left, and the builders stayed and hid the entrance and then left leaving King Kufu's body and spirit to enjoy the afterlife in peace.

2. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

Babylon, capitol of Babylonia, was at its peak from about 620-550 BC. It was ruled by warrior kings, and the Babylonian empire included all of the towns and people around it. Barges and merchant ships on the river, and mule trains and camel trains over land brought traders from all parts of the world, eager to barter the wealth of their own countries for Babylonian corn. The city's treasuries bulged with gold, silver, ebony, ivory, silk, and precious stones; its streets, fields, and warehouses bustled with slaves; its walls and temples glittered with ornament; and its parks were filled with plants and trees from every place in the world.

In 605 BC Nebuchadnezzar became king of Babylon. He was the most successful warrior king ever. The only people Nebuchadnezzar did not try to conquer were the Medes. They lived in the wild mountain country far to Babylon's north. Instead of fighting, Nebuchadnezzar won the Medes over by marrying their princess, Amytis, and made a friendly alliance between the two nations. Amytis had never lived anywhere besides the mountains, and she was used to them, but Babylonia was flat. She watched Nebuchadnezzar's men building walls, temples, and city gates, and she longed for the mountains. Nebuchadnezzar ordered his men to build the Hanging Gardens to remind Amytis of her home.

The first thing that they did to build the gardens was to make a series of brick arches to hold them. They were ten stories high, and had a shaded courtyard underneath. On top of them, the workmen built brick terraces. They lined the terraces with lead and put a thick layer of soil on top. On the platform Nebuchadnezzar's men planted every imaginable kind of tree and plant, importing them from all over the kingdom. Babylon's people saw to it that the gardens would not be a wonder for a only few weeks or months so they made an irrigation system where there was a chain of buckets controlled

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by slaves who would keep the buckets going around in circles, taking water from the river to the gardens.

The Hanging Gardens lasted after Nebuchadnezzar and Amytis died and still existed during Alexander the Great's time, but now all that is left is a pile of dusty rubble.

3. Temple of Artemis

The Temple of Artemis, built in the fourth century BC, was funded by Croesus, the king of Lydia. Its main purpose was to be a worship center for the moon goddess, Artemis. It was also used as a marketplace.

For the construction, the renowned architect, Chersiphron, used pulleys and metal pegs for hoisting the limestone blocks and 60 foot marble pillars onto the 430x259 foot rectangular base. The 120 huge columns that surrounded the temple were so brilliantly decorated that they looked like they took hundreds of years to carve.

In the middle of the temple stood a statue of the goddess which was a sight to behold because it was made of marble and decorated with ivory and gold. Hundreds of people flocked to the temple every year to see it, including merchants, common people, artisans, and kings.

The temple was so sturdy that it stood from the time it was built, in the 4th century BC, to the time it was accepted a wonder, in 550 BC. There were actually many constructions because the temple was built at a time in history when there was much war and unrest in the world. As time went on, and as more people converted to Christianity, the temple lay forgotten in the swamp.

In 1869 T.J. Wood, a British engineer, discovered the ruins of the temple in the swamp. Archaeologists have recently tried to piece together the 120 pillars of the temple and have gotten 4 successfully rebuilt.

4. Statue of Zeus at Olympia

Imagine the majestic setting of Olympus, the mountain dwelling of the gods of ancient Greece, and the city of Olympia, site of the original Olympic games. What would be more fitting than building a temple to worship Zeus, the King of the Gods? But what do you do when the finished building is not fancy enough to honor him properly? If you are an ancient Greek in about 450 BC, you commission the sculptor, Phidias, to create a magnificent ivory and gold statue of the god.

Phidias created the forty-three foot statue of Zeus seated on his throne around a wooden pillar embedded in the base. Then he made a wooden framework

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around the pillar. This frame was covered with ivory for "skin" and gold carved with figures of animals and flowers for "clothing". Zeus held a scepter topped with a golden eagle and made using every metal known to the ancient Greeks. The throne was decorated with gold, ebony, and ivory. At the foot of the statue were piled gifts from kings and rulers to honor Zeus.

The Olympic games were held at Olympia in honor of Zeus. One hundred cattle were sacrificed at the altar in the front of the statue's temple every time the games were held. The altar where the offering took place was, by legend, where a bolt of Zeus' lightning struck the Earth.

In the year 391 AD, the Romans banned the Olympic Games and statue was moved to the the Roman city of Constantinople. The legend has it that when workers came to move the statue it gave out a loud laugh and the workers ran away.

5. Mausoleum of Maussollos

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, in Lonia, has given its name to all subsequent tomb monuments. Mausolus, satrap of Caria, was honored with this tomb by his queen, Artemisia (350 B.C.) Architects Satyros and Pythios designed a temple-like marble tomb with an Ionic colonnade on a high base surrounded by lions; the roof was a 24-step pyramid on the peak of which stood a chariot. Famous sculptors Timotheus, Bryaxis, Leochares, and Scopas created the Frieze--depicting Amazons battling heroes--which is now in the British Museum Site on which the Mausoleum stood. It was excavated in 1857 and now the medieval castle at Bodrum, Turkey contains many fragments from it.

Mausolus decided to build a new capitol, a city as hard to capture as it was magnificent to look at. He chose the town Halicarnassus. If Mausolus' ships blocked a small channel, they could keep all enemy warships out.

Mausolus started making Halicarnassus a fit capitol for a warrior prince. His workmen deepened the city's harbor and used the dredged up sand to make protecting arms in front of the channel. On land, they laid out paved squares, streets, and houses for ordinary citizens, and on one side of the harbor they built a massive fortress-palace for Mausolus, positioned so that there were clear views out to sea and inland to the hills--the places that enemies might attack.

The workmen built walls and watch towers on the land ward side and put up a Greek style theater and a temple to Ares, the Greek god of war.

Mausolus and his queen Artemisia spent their huge amount of tax money on beautifying the city. They bought statues, temples, and buildings of gleaming

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marble. In the center of the city Mausolus planned to place a resting place for his body after he was dead. It would be a tomb that would forever show how rich he and his queen were.

Mausolus hired people to get marble and build the tomb out of it. He died before the tomb was finished, but Artimesia wanted the architects to continue. The architects who designed the Mausoleum (after Mausolus) were used to designing buildings for gods but they built for Mausolus and Artemisia on the same scale. The workmen began with an underground tomb carved out of stone. The royal couple's ashes would lie there forever in their gold caskets. Above it was a huge rectangular stone base. On top of that was a building the size and shape of a Greek temple, surrounded by thirty-six columns and thirty-six statues. The building's roof was like a stone pyramid with twenty-four steps, and on its flat top was a statue-group of a chariot pulled by four horses. It had three different styles (Carian, Greek, Egyptian) the three civilizations he wanted to bring together in his new city.

The architects did every thing that they could to make to Mausoleum more stunning. The Mausoleum was probably solid all the way through. Shortly after it was done, Artemisia died and was put in it after her husband.

They laid undisturbed for 1800 years until an earthquake destroyed the Mausoleum. People used the stones for buildings and the tomb was finally discovered.

Pirates stole the gold and now only few pieces exist. Now they use the word Mausoleum as a tomb for someone important.

6. Colossus of Rhodes

After Alexander the Great died in 336 BC, his generals began arguing over who would rule his empire. They sided with Ptolemy, the general who controlled Egypt. At once Ptolemy’s rival, Antigonus, who controlled Greece, sent his son, Demetrius, to destroy Rhodes. Demetrius failed and he and his men sailed away.

As soon as Demetrius was gone, the Rhodians decided to thank Helios, the sun god, for protecting them by building the biggest statue anyone had ever seen. It would be a handsome prince with a cloak in his left hand (the cloak of darkness which the sun's light sweeps from the sky each morning.) His right hand would be raised to his eyes to direct their light beams out across the world. It came to be known as the Colossus because it was so huge.

The sculptor, Chares, set up a marble platform for the statue to stand on. Then they mounted the statue's huge bronze, hollow feet on it. After that,

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they built from the legs up, piece by piece. They shaped each new limb or joint in the workshop, carried it to the building site, and bolted it into place. Inside each metal leg was a marble pillar to keep it from falling over. As soon as each hollow section was in place, they filled it with a mixture of rubble and stones. The statue was eighteen times human size and it took twelve years to finish. When they finished the statue, they polished it until it shone like the sun. The Colossus probably acted like our Statue of Liberty, welcoming visitors into a new country.

The statue stood for fifty-six years until, in 224 BC, it fell in an earthquake. The superstitious Rhodians left it laying there for no less than 900 years. No one even thought of stripping the valuable metal from the giant until in 654 AD, when a Syrian prince named Muswiyah captured Rhodes. He took the bronze, dumped the rubble in the harbor, and converted the valuable metal into bronze coins.

7. Pharos of Alexandria

The Alexandria lighthouse stood on Pharos Island in the harbor off Alexandria, Egypt. It was the tallest structure in the world when it was built. It was said that the Lighthouse could be seen from thirty-one miles away.

The project of building the Lighthouse was begun by Ptolemy Soter around 290 BC. Sostratus, a contemporary of Euclid, was the architect. He consulted with the scholars at the Alexandria library for help with calculations for the structure.

The Alexandria Lighthouse was the last of the Ancient Wonders to disappear, so archaeologists can give an accurate description of it. It was built in three layers. The lowest was a square 183.4 feet high. The middle layer was an octagon 90.1 feet tall. The top was circular and 24 feet high. The entire Lighthouse was 384 feet, or almost 40 stories, high!

Once it was completed, the Lighthouse functioned day and night to make sure that sailors could safely navigate the dangerous waters into the harbor. It used the sun by day and fire by night. The fuel for the fire was probably coal and/or wood. The giant mirror used to reflect the sunlight was so powerful that legend says it could burn enemy ships miles before they reached Alexandria.

When the Arabs conquered Egypt they mistakenly removed the mirror from the Lighthouse. The building itself stood until 1323 AD, when a powerful earthquake destroyed it.

From: http://library.thinkquest.org

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